Just been watching Sky and was watching “Hoax Files” and was laughing all the way through it. But my favourite is a hoax made by one of the largest organisations around. The year was 1957, the date, the notorious 1st of April, the culprit, the BBC. Thats right, the beeb broadcast an episode of Panorama, highly respected documentary show, with an article about how the mild winters of 1956 had lead to a bumper havest of spaghetti in the swiss farms.
Fantastically, a huge number of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To which the BBC diplomatically replied that they should “place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best”.
[ Museum Of Hoaxes] [ Realplayer video of the article ]